Samsung Galaxy Nexus

8/10

Wired

The best Android phone to date, hands down. Improvements in Ice Cream Sandwich make it much easier to use. Super AMOLED screen is bright and crisp. Cool features like Face Unlock and NFC-powered Beam take phone-based parlor tricks to a new level. Data Usage tool provides granular graphs for us OCD types to obsess over.

Tired

Some apps not fully optimized for ICS, bringing out annoying bugs. Snaps pics way faster than a Polaroid, though image quality is twice as crappy. Awesomely shiny screen makes for less-than-awesome battery life.

Not that current Android phones fall short in machine power. Rather, much like the androids of the silver screen, the operating system has been the weak point. Previous versions of Android have lacked some intangible spark. A human element, perhaps — a missing je ne sais quoi that has been keeping many critics and users from fully engaging with the platform.

It’s a debatable point, but I’d argue that “special something” can be found in Android’s biggest competitor, Apple’s iOS. Siri, the voice-activated digital servant on the iPhone 4S, is a great example of a feature that marries technical prowess with a human touch: We speak to “her”, not to “it.”

Android, on the other hand, has always been sold on the strength of its robotic nature. Power, hardware specs and hackability were the reasons why we were supposed to buy an Android. It’s not a posh concierge, it’s a Swiss Army Knife.

But with the Galaxy Nexus, Google has put a little soul into the machine.

The Galaxy Nexus is a collaboration between Google and Samsung, and the device runs the purest, most “true” representation of Android 4.0 you can get your hands on.

The smartphone, available Thursday for Verizon’s 4G LTE network, runs Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest iteration of Google’s mobile OS. To date, it’s only shipping on this phone — the Galaxy Nexus is a collaboration between Google and Samsung, and the device runs the purest, most “true” representation of Android 4.0 you can get your hands on.

Gestures play a much larger role, and this goes a long way towards humanizing the interface. The settings menus inside of native applications, once only navigable via inscrutable, nested lists, are now neatly tucked off to the sides of the screens. By using your thumb to slide the screen to the side in most native apps, you can bring up (and dismiss) these hidden menus. Pinch-to-zoom is incorporated more intuitively into apps, too. In the calendar, for example, reverse-pinching on a list of the whole day’s events zooms in on a specific block of hours. Touch-typing has also been revamped to receive user input more accurately.

The opacity of certain elements like the notifications area has been reduced, making the slider translucent so you can always see what’s going on beneath it. The phone’s contacts menu is smarter, as it now pulls info from all of your synced social apps. All this leads to fewer taps, swipes and squints.

Even Android’s system-wide typeface was reimagined, giving the OS more personality. “Roboto,” Android’s new official font, permeates all parts of the OS. Google’s Android user experience chief Matias Duarte tells Wired the font serves a dual purpose, staying “modern, yet approachable,” but with mechanical forms underscored by a “cheerful demeanor.”

Though they may seem like insignificant changes, these things are the meat, the true stuff of which “soul” is composed. When a device cooperates with you more fully, you develop a stronger emotional connection with it. You start to smile as you notice all the little details and flourishes.

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Don’t get me wrong. Android hasn’t gone all soft.

Hardware-wise, the Galaxy Nexus is still a beast. Unlike the previous Nexus model, the phone’s display measures a sizable 4.65 inches, one of the largest of all smartphones on the market, period.

And it’s packing the requisite Android-worthy firepower, complete with 1.2-GHz dual-core processor backed by a gigabyte of RAM.

But strangely enough, it doesn’t feel beastly. Almost teardrop-like in profile, the Nexus has a wide bottom that tapers as the eye moves upward, still retaining the slight plastic lip on the lower-back part of the handset. And despite its girth, the phone doesn’t possess any large degree of heft, feeling airy in hand while still slim enough to slip into a tight pair of jeans.

Surface hardware is minimal, with the tooling taking a backseat to what Samsung does well: the display. Similar to last year’s Nexus S, the plastic bezel wrapped around the Galaxy Nexus’ screen is incredibly thin, with nearly every square inch of the phone’s face devoted to fine glass construction.

More importantly, the ICS home screen just looks right on the phone’s tough Gorilla Glass exterior. The newly revamped interface is replete with cool blues, metallic grays and lots of subtly swishing animated effects. Much of that enchanting vibe would be lost on an inferior display, but the 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED screen delivers all the crisp, clear image quality that makes hardcore mobile enthusiasts flock to Samsung’s perfect pixels.

The Galaxy Nexus’ facade is entirely button-free — virtual software keys have sprung up in their stead. They’re unobtrusive, anchored modestly to the bottom of the screen, yet shiftable to the side if, say, you tilt your phone into landscape mode to take a photo.

And with the new Nexus, you’re expected to be shooting a whole hell of a lot of pictures. Image captures are lightning-fast, with very little lag between hitting the button and snapping the frame.

Unfortunately, with the increase in speed comes a loss in quality. Image resolution is pretty crummy, and unless you’ve got a steady hand, you’ll probably need to snap three or four shots to get a truly non-blurry picture. Still, I’ve missed countless precious moments over the years due to sluggish shutters; I’ll take a slightly fuzzy photo over nothing at all any day of the week.

It’s obvious that Ice Cream Sandwich is the star of this particular show, so it’s smart that the hardware basically gets out the way and doesn’t try to impress us with flash and flair. It works very well, and it looks great doing it, leaving the spotlight to fall on ICS.

Under that spotlight, we can see the whole of what Google is aiming for with the new Android. Visually, it’s stripped down, subdued and sleek. But beneath the calm surface, there are unmeasurable intricacies, performance tweaks and tiny improvements that aim to inject a little bit of humanity into this robot’s brain.